


Flashes and Fireballs

by turianosauruswrex



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Flash Fic, Gen, Highly Unedited And At Least Fifty Percent Written On A Bus, good lord there's so many OCs in this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2018-12-15 04:07:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11798055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turianosauruswrex/pseuds/turianosauruswrex
Summary: Fic written from inbox prompts on Tumblr, posted here for your perusal-slash-enjoyment with minor edits from the original posts. Meet Jules McAllister, Courier Six; Miranda St. James, the Queen of New Vegas; Lafayette Jones, NCR Ranger-- and more!





	1. Overgrown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One-word prompt ask meme: "Overgrown" from powerfisto

Last time Jules passed through here it was on fire, acrid smokestacks flagging her down from a dozen miles off. From the minute she’d turned onto Main Street, seen the shattered windows and blackening walls all around she’d been satisfied with its fate. A fitting goodbye after what this town did to her; eye for an eye and the rest of that shit even if she wasn’t the one striking the match. After following the Legion out she’d thought she’d seen it for the last time. She’d thought.

Fire’s out now, of course, it’s been years. Enough for her to re-learn how to use her tools, how to take apart and repair anything from radios to eyebots to plasma rifles and use those skills to get a job as New Vegas’s chief civil engineer, which eventually brought her back here, surveying the long grasses between rail ties and around cross bases, young joshua trees reaching into shattered windows, cracks in asphalt sprouting what hardy plant life they could. Nipton is barely a dot on the map; no one’s bothered to resettle it after it was barely settled in the first place. Better that it’s left to nature anyways; let the radscorpions and ghouls take it. Jules certainly doesn’t want it.

But New Vegas does.

“What do you say?” The Mojave’s favorite -  _only_ , thank God - Desert Queen follows Jules towards the emergency railyard just outside of town, one foot stepping carefully in front of the other as she balances along the rail in her heavy black boots. “I figure it’ll be a challenge for you, keep you busy for a good while to get one of those engines going since we’ve got Vegas up and running pretty good. But then we can start using the rail lines again, get supplies and people to and from California.” She looks down at Jules, tilting her head to the side with a frown. “It’ll get you out of Vegas, too. Yes Man told me there’s been people giving you trouble lately.”

“...Yeah.” 

“I know you can take care of yourself but if you want  _me_ to deal with anyone, just say the word. I’ve got your back.”

“Uh huh.” Jules picks at a hole in her tights and shuffles to a stop as she turns back towards Nipton, lost years in the past. It’s all still so... _vivid_. Every day spent seeking her next high, every red-tinted night, her mother’s death and her own close call, seared into her memory. What is she  _thinking -_ what is she  _doing_  here? It keeps pulling her back, doesn’t it - physically _now_ , even in her habits each night on the Strip. Take the girl out of the town but can’t take the town out of the girl, Vulpes would say, were he here.

Her companion pauses and turns, still balanced on the rail. “You okay?”

“It’s fine.” She rubs her eyes and keeps moving. “I’ll see what I can do.” At the very least she can salvage parts to fix the monorail. Spare parts and broken machinery - if that’s the most useful thing Nipton has to offer the rest of the world, so be it.


	2. Too Loud

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One-word prompt ask meme: "Too loud" from dragonie

So much noise - so much chaos - Legion war cries and clanking metal, gunshots, grunts of pain and effort, her own heartbeat racing in her ears, no aid given from her Ranger helmet and mask. Focus, Lafayette, _focus_ – she slams the butt of her revolver into another legionary’s skull and he goes down with a cry but doesn’t stand again.

“ _FAYE!_ ”

The word cuts through the cacophony and her blood freezes in her veins. “ELI!” She shoves away the legionary closing in on her and bolts towards her husband’s voice only to run immediately into more legionaries– centurions, decanii, surrounding her, filling in every space she clears for herself.

“ _ELI!_ ” she screams again. No answer. She empties her gun, throws another round of bullets in, over and over and over until more shots ring out from the hills around her, more Rangers answering the distress call she’d sent out a lifetime ago.

The remaining legionaries fall quickly but it’s too late – Eli’s gone. He’s  _gone,_ for the first time in years Lafayette is without him and it’s a massive, infinite hole in her chest she’s frantic to fill.


	3. Silent Fury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One-word prompt ask meme: "Silent fury" from randamhajile

_You lied to me._

_You promised...you promised me honor, glory – more than that, dignity and security and family and love I never had, you **promised**  me everything I’ve ever wanted and it was a  **lie.**  How – how dare you – you treated me like – like I’m less than human, because I was vulnerable, and desperate, and gullible, and..._

So much Jules has to say to Caesar – words burning white-hot just beyond her tongue. 

__You let your **sidekick**  toy with me, you practically ordered him to – do you  **get off**  on that? You  **wanted**  this to happen?_ You knew from the beginning, you could see what I was and you took advantage of me. You’re  **sick** – you made me do  **horrific**  things – was it for the Legion or for your own  **personal**  enjoyment?  **How dare you.**_

She should have listened to Ulysses, she should have listened to the  _Rangers_  and he doesn’t know how much it  _kills_  her to say that – and he  _knew_  exactly what he was doing, the  _unimaginable_  cruelty –

_But I’ve learned, **Edward.** I’m not your pawn anymore._

_You are nothing to me, you **are nothing,** I found people more genuine than you could  **ever**  hope to be. You’re just another in a long line of men who’ve used me and I’ve never needed any of them any more than I need  **you.**_

She lets her knife do the talking for her.


	4. Sunbathing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One-word prompt ask meme: "Sunbathing" from geekwiththegoggles

“What the hell is she doing?!”

“It’s a nice day out, Ms. Liu, she wanted to be outside!”

“She’s going to DIE!” Holly shoves past her sister-in-law’s  _pet securitron_  (and  _that_  was still taking some getting used to, not to mention  _everything else_  the kid’s been up to) and storms up the stairs leading to the Lucky 38′s roof. The stairs had not been there when Mr. House was in charge of New Vegas; they were a new addition when Miri took over.

She throws open the door, clinging to the frame – she may be essentially immortal now that she’s a ghoul but ‘essentially’ is the operative word and she’s never been good with heights anyways, make her dizzy. “Miranda St. James, you come inside  _this instant!_ ”

Miri lazily rolls over on her beach towel – she’s in a damn  _rhinestone-studded bikini_  for chrissakes – and lifts her head, long black hair piled high above equally glitzy sunglasses that she lowers to look at who’s interrupting her tanning session. “Oh. Hey, Holly. Come to join me? It’s nice up here.”

“It’s a fucking  _casino rooftop_ , Miri!”

“It’s  _my_  casino rooftop.”

“What if you fall off and die?! What is New Vegas gonna do then?”

“Oh, I’m not gonna die, I decided that  _years_  ago.” Miri pushes her sunglasses back up and stretches out again. “Relax, I’m not anywhere near the edge.”

Holly fumes but doesn’t step outside. “I can’t believe your sister didn’t teach you better. When she hears about this  _stupid_  stunt–”

Miri starts cackling. “Claire?! She  _taught_ me this kinda shit! Do you know your wife at all?!”

Holly pauses, then shakes her head. Not a battle she wants to fight, not worth it, not today. “I can’t really stop you, so just...be careful I guess.” Sunbathing on the casino roof...thank god the rest of the family wasn’t like this.


	5. Their Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Describe your OCs ask meme: "Their dreams" from Dragonie

At age six, Jules dreams of being a scientist, though perhaps her understanding of the profession is a little loose. Junk becomes laser rifles as she galavants through the streets of Nipton, protecting her mother from hordes of imaginary killer robots, rocks for plasma grenades flying at bad guys who look suspiciously like the mayor. Eliza dutifully plays along, the damsel in distress for her daughter’s heroics, and when they’re at home she tries to teach her _actual_ science, as much as she knows anyway. Jules squeals with delight at the bubbles of baking soda and vinegar and devours their homemade rock candy; dragging her feet on the rug to build up enough static electricity to shock boys at school  becomes her new favorite hobby, but when she sleeps she still uses Science (!) to defeat aliens and monsters, just like she hears on the radio shows.

At 14 she dreams that telling her first crush how she felt had gone better -- or any differently at all, instead of the WHOLE SCHOOL laughing at her. She fakes being sick for three days so she won’t have to go back, tries in vain to talk her mother into moving away so she won’t have to endure the MORTIFICATION she’ll surely face. Eliza brings her soup and lets her stay home for the rest of the week, but come Monday morning she’s prodding Jules out of bed, bribing her with pancakes and words of encouragement. They’ll forget about it as soon as the next big thing comes along, she says, and being rejected by a crush is far from the worst thing that could happen to a teenager. She has the rest of her life ahead of her; she’ll find someone, but for now she’s only 14 -- romance should be the least of her worries. It might feel like the end of the world, but Eliza assures her, it is not. The others still snicker behind Jules’ back, though, and when one dares to mock her to her face she throws him to the ground with a lightning-fast right hook, challenging anyone else to do the same and receive the same punishment.

At 19 Eliza is gone. When Jules finally passes out after inhaling so much jet, she’s there in her dreams, lingering and dying again before Jules can say anything, tell her how sorry she is for not being a better daughter, for not trying harder to make her proud, god she’s so sorry...Eliza never speaks either, only stands and watches, judging as her daughter turns to chems to cope with her loss -- judgment only worsening when Jules resorts to the most desperate of measures to feed her addiction.

Nineteen also sees her first recurring nightmare, reliving her near-evisceration at the hands of an enraged client even as she lies recovering from it, the knife slicing her open over and over, leaving her struggling for air until she gasps herself awake, still clutching the line of stitches holding her together. She spends her nights on her back and her days barely conscious, constantly fantasizing in a jet-induced haze of the day she’d get out and leave Nipton behind for good.

Hands plague the dreams of her early 20s -- some with knives, most without, touching and groping and grabbing, belonging to mayors and soldiers and anonymous traders whose faces she couldn’t remember even if she hadn’t been high at the time. Cured of her drug addiction and living on her own in Primm, in an honest job for the Mojave Express, Jules still can’t rid herself of them or her mother’s disappointed gaze, but she does find they’re less vivid when she drinks -- so she drinks.

Her dreams stop entirely when she’s shot in the head and buried in a shallow grave.

Until she finds the Legion, that is, and she’s remembered what she’s done and what she’s been through and is desperate for a way to redeem herself, worthless though she is. Childhood dreams of Science (!) and heroism shoved aside, Jules swears absolute loyalty to Caesar, first to avenge the wrong done to her by California’s neglect, then to make her new surrogate father figure proud. At night instead of her mother she dreams of Caesar now, standing at his side looking down at the Colorado River at Hoover Dam as the Bull flies triumphant overhead. He tells her what a good job she did, how vital she was to the Legion’s victory, how proud he is to have her in his army and of all they’ll accomplish now.

That shatters when Vulpes crucifies her at 23 after a humiliating parade through Freeside, all her sins laid bare for the world to condemn. She prays she’ll come to and that it’s all been a horrible, horrible drug trip, but it’s a waking nightmare that culminates in her execution. _In hoc signo, taurus vinces._ It rings through her memory even after she’s rescued and through what dreams she has when she manages to sleep.

At 26 it’s over. The Legion is dead and Caesar with it, in reality if not in Jules’ dreams. She’s reminded nightly of Caesar’s death at her hands and every time she wakes up she expects to find them still stained with his blood. She’s an engineer now, putting her love for Science (!) towards rebuilding New Vegas, helping people, doing something definitively _good_ for once in her life. Science is concrete. Black and white. There’s a right and a wrong answer and it’s obvious immediately if she does something the wrong way. No ambiguity, not even for someone who’s taken a bullet to a chem-addled brain. The recurring nightmares of stabbing, whoring, crucifixion, humiliation dim, replaced by fonder memories the more comfortable she gets in Vegas: warm nights spent stargazing with her mother, chilly ones under a blanket on their couch listening to their favorite radio dramas, beach trips during the summer. Her new friends feature in them, too, Miri usually leading Jules and Lexington on some kind of bizarre adventure that ends with all three of them hailed as heroes.

But soon, insidious, a new nightmare rears its head -- Jules is back in the Divide, with the launch timer ticking down until the nukes fire at California. Ulysses’ disembodied voice booming around her, saying she has a second chance, she can stop the missiles this time, save countless lives. But looking at the control panel is like trying to read a foreign alphabet -- all the circuits and wiring are strange to her, incomprehensible, and before she can beg for help it’s too late. Outside she finds herself on the irradiated Long 15, her Geiger counter screaming, drawing a mob of NCR ghouls that swarm her just before she jolts awake.

Jules gets a brief respite when Lexington poaches her to be New Zion’s chief civil engineer, but it doesn’t last long as all her old nightmares resurface in full force, dragging her back down into the depths with her constant guilt and forcing her back into the arms of chems, booze and strangers in bars. No dreams would be better than what she’s been given. _Oblivion_ would be preferable to this daily onslaught of shame she’s suffering.

When Jules hits the bottom of her spiral and Lexington intervenes herself and vicariously through her husband, the Burned Man himself, the dreams stop again. Daily talks -- half the time arguments, half the time confession -- with Graham drive her to exhaustion, too tired at night to do much more than pass out at home. Her nights are quiet, for the first time in years, and she can finally sleep soundly.

Years later, at 40, Jules drifts off beside her husband on their couch, their four-year-old daughter snuggled between them, and finds herself dreaming of her mother again. But...Eliza’s not disappointed anymore. Not upset, not judging,  just sitting on the roof of their Nipton house next to Jules, smiling gently at her. She leans forward to kiss her daughter’s forehead and whispers, softly, “I’m so proud of you, Julia.” 


	6. Lost Child

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Request from corviidaee: "OC dealing with a lost child"

Jules meanders her way through the plaza, still buzzed but not blackout drunk as she has been the past few days-- and it is  _ days; _ by the time night falls and the  _ respectable _ gentiles in New Zion start drinking she's long gone, passed out in a booth or a gutter until she comes around again and dives back in. But not today though, no, for once everything has gone smoothly today. No harassment, no guilt tripping, it's just normal. Or at least what she  _ assumes _ normal in New Zion's like.

She feels a tug at the hem of her skirt. Ignores it, probably just caught on something. But it tugs again, harder this time, more insistent, and Jules looks down to see the culprit: a blonde-haired blue-eyed little girl, maybe six years old, her hair in two braids and in a neat little pink dress, staring up at her on the verge of tears.

“Are you Miss Julia?” the girl says, gripping the skirt tighter in her hand.

“...Yeah.” How does she know who she is? Jules makes a habit to avoid spending any amount of time around people under the age of 20, Lex's kids excluded because Lex would never let them not be; how would this kid know her? Unless--

“You came to school and taught us about electricity,” the girl continues, “so you're not a stranger. Mama doesn't want me to talk to strangers but you're not.”

“Uh-huh.” Jules looks around for any sign of the girl's parents. “Where  _ is _ your mama, anyway?”

The girl actually starts crying now-- oh fuck oh  _ fuck,  _ Jules can't even handle this with the Graham children much less this one-- and clings tighter to the skirt. “I don't know...she left me behind, I don't know where she went, Miss Julia!”

_ Fuck. _

Jules takes her hand, pats her stiffly on the shoulder as she kneels down to the girl's eye level. “There, there, it's okay...I'm sure your mom didn't leave you behind...”

“She  _ did! _ ” Her tears flow nonstop now, eyes wide and terrified. “I  _ know _ she did!”

“No, no, it'll be okay. Your mom would never forget you.” Jules leads the girl over to a bench on the edge of the plaza, near a cart selling Nuka Cola. She hands over the caps for two bottles-- probably more than necessary, her fine motor skills aren't at their best right now-- and hands one to the girl. “Here, let's sit.” She plops onto the bench and pats the space beside her. “C’mon. Let's sit for a minute.”

The girl looks at the soda bottle skeptically. “Mama says I'm not allowed to have Nuka Cola.”

“Well, I say you can.” Jules takes a swig of her own soda-- much too sweet for her taste, but at least it's some semblance of hydration after today's miniature bender. “What's your name?”

The girl hops up onto the bench beside her and cautiously sips at the bottle. “Kandelyn.”

Jesus. There's no break with these New Canaanites’ names, is there? “It’s nice to meet you. Now, I think it might be a good idea to wait here for your mom, yeah? She's probably looking everywhere for you and it's best for us to stay in one spot.”

Kandelyn nods with a sniffle.

“So...” God, how do you have a conversation with a distressed child? Lex's kids are never like this or when they are there's someone  _ not her _ there with her, ugh. “What were you doing today?”

“Shopping. Mama always takes us grocery shopping with her at the market on Thursdays.” Kandelyn starts swinging her feet back and forth. “If we behave she lets us get candy when she's done.”

Jules nods and scans the crowd for any sign of a woman who could be this girl's mother. “You have siblings?”

“Yeah. Just a brother though. He’s four. His name's Anfernee.”

Jesus  _ Christ. _ “Do you guys get along?”

“I guess.” Kandelyn drinks more of her soda and watches a few birds dart overhead. “I _really_ wanted a sister. Mama’s having another baby soon and I really hope this one's a girl, all my cousins are boys and they're  _ awwwwwfulllll. _ ”

Jules wrinkles her nose in mock disgust. “I'll bet. Boys are gross.”

“ _ Really _ gross. And they bother me  _ all _ the time!” Kandelyn looks back at her. “Do boys ever bother you?”

Ha. Loaded question, kid. “Not anymore. They did when I was your age, though.”

“What did you do?”

_ Punched 'em, _ Jules has to stop herself from saying. Can't have her uncouth gentile upbringing corrupting New Zion's children. Instead she shrugs, tries to rub the headache out of her temples. “Told 'em to stop, loud as I could, over and over until they did. Eventually they got tired of it.” She pauses. “But those boys were different, I'm sure your cousins love you, and the rest of your family too.”

“I guess.” Kandelyn shrugs. “I don't like being teased, though. Mama said I should ignore them but--”

“Nah, you can't just let them get away with it,” Jules says, “you have to stand up for yourself! You gotta let 'em know they have to stop; ignoring them won't make them go away.”

The girl's about to reply when she's interrupted by a frantic woman's voice.

“Kandelyn? Kandelyn, there you are, oh thank goodness!” A very pregnant young woman with another child in tow shoves past other shoppers milling about and scoops her daughter up in a big hug. “I was so worried about you, are you alright?”

Kandelyn nods as she's set down. “I asked Miss Julia for help, she came to our school so I  _ knew _ she wasn't a stranger.”

The woman looks over at Jules, wiping a stray tear from her eye with her thumb. “Thank you for watching her, Julia--”

“Just Jules is fine.” She shrugs and smiles, downing some more soda. “It's not a problem.”

“Yes, well...I can't thank you enough. She just wandered off when I had my back turned for one second, I can't believe…” The woman presses one hand to her mouth and rests the other on her stomach. “I can't thank you enough, Jules.”

“Like I said, not a problem. I'm glad she's okay.” Jules stands and stretches her arms with a wink at Kandelyn. “See? Told you she wouldn't forget you.”

Kandelyn grins, and she and her brother wave back at Jules as their mother leads them home. For a split second, Jules’ heart feels a bit warmer.


End file.
